You know, I was appalled by the personal attacks heaped during the Clinton years on Ken Starr, an upstanding public servant and a man whose previous career had been one of unblemished integrity and civility. I felt then - and still do - that the relentless attacks on Starr, as a means of delegitimizing his inquiry and distracting from the merits of the case, were bad for the administration of justice. And so, I have deeply mixed feelings about the "pig pile on Ronnie Earle" playbook. But the more I see of Earle's record, the more obvious it is that this is a guy with a long track record of troubling behavior with regard both to this investigation and other politically charged investigations. Maybe he has the goods on DeLay; I'm still in the process of absorbing the ins and outs of Texas campaign finance law in the hopes of making sense of this whole thing. But his behavior certainly doesn't inspire confidence.